Audun Alvestad: Undercurrents

A figure sleeps at his desk, surrounded by pages of writing, open sketchbooks, pots of paint brushes and plants. Washed in watery shades of green, the room around him seems to expand and waver. Undercurrents, a solo exhibition by Audun Alvestad at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, West Palm Beach, visualises a psychological state that straddles the conscious and unconscious mind – a space tied to both personal and artistic transformation. Within this shifting terrain, inner and outer worlds collide, thoughts and images emerge and drift, doorways open onto new possibilities.

While Alvestad’s paintings have previously centred around some form of social commentary, characterised by their detached, deadpan quality, these latest compositions mark a shift both in subject matter and style. The focus here is on interiority, where the brushstrokes and visual language are more flowing, evoking a sense of things evolving and connecting. This transformation was born out of a period of personal and artistic struggle which led Alvestad through various processes of experimentation. The resulting works occupy a shadowy, in-between space where ambiguity and uncertainty are explored as creative and elemental forces. Meandering streams of water appear as pathways, guiding the eye through disparate imagery while also symbolising unconscious processes, the flow of interior time and the flux of thought.

Recurring motifs such as open books, canvases, and paintbrushes evoke the notion of an artist’s studio, but the act of creation itself has occurred elsewhere or at another time. Instead, the majority of the figures we encounter are engaged in a non-active creative process, where ideas are beginning to form and take shape. In works such as Felt good to have you for a second this state is imbued with ritualistic imagery: a kneeling figure releases a nebulous substance from their palms, while another assumes a prayer-like posture. Fragmented images and sketched outlines suggest the notion of becoming, while the recurrent presence of a wine bottle throughout the exhibition hints at a loss of control or perhaps the tool for accessing this particular state of mind.

Alvestad’s tongue-in-cheek titles point to a sense of irony in these depictions of the struggling artist – praying for inspiration or trying to shortcut the process through booze – that also point to the ways in which art-making continues to be romanticised. My story might be true, for instance, contains all the trappings of a bohemian lifestyle: plates of half-eaten food, a bottle of wine, a cigarette burning in an ashtray, open books and canvases. But this is, at least in part, an imagined scene: the artist is dozing, head in arms, the world around him coloured by his dreams. The illusion of choice depicts another interior space, this one occupied by two figures who are in close proximity but separated, absorbed in their own thoughts. The ghostly blue tones emphasise the sense of disconnect. In this work, as in others, the exterior world intrudes on the interior, evoking the collapse or merging of boundaries—perhaps hinting at the possibility for connection, if not here and now, then in the future.

This sense of dissolution, of a fluid state, is further explored through works such as Emphatic resonance and People think I’m sleeping, laying on the floor, which blend figuration with areas of abstraction. The titles again express Alvestad’s dry sense of humour and perhaps an element of self-consciousness – at wanting and needing to embrace the process, ‘to go with the flow.’ But there is also a vulnerability to these works in their bruising, watery hues, and nude figures, which alternately appear almost god-like in their monumental scale, as if their limbs are carved out of the earth or sky, and at others lost, half-formed to the point of being barely visible outlines. The presence of vessels throughout the series – sometimes used to collect water, store brushes or house plants – evokes both everyday rituals and ancient practices: acts of gathering, preserving, and making sense of what’s around us. Bottling inspiration is a vaguely absurd idea, but also deeply familiar – the desire to hold on to moments of clarity or creative flow, to save them for when we need them most.

In a sense, these are the undercurrents that run through the work: not the image of the solitary artist locked away, but the shared, shifting experience of being human – of navigating uncertainty, seeking connection and finding moments of stillness amid the noise.